This is the latest post in what I call jokingly call The Kimberlin Saga®. If you are new to the story, that’s okay! Not everyone reads my blog. So if you are new to the story, go to this page and you’ll be able to catch up on what has been happening.
So today is correction day at Allergic to Bull. On one hand, I made an embarrassing mistake and a big correction in a post earlier today. It puts egg on your face, but it happens.
And now I am going to talk about the correction that didn’t happen in Alex Pareene’s piece last week. He wrote a piece for Salon entitled Brett Kimberlin versus right wing bloggers, which seemed at first glance to be pretty risible. For instance, here’s what I consider to be the most questionable part in the piece, discussing how Stacy McCain and his family fled their home after Kimberlin contacted his wife’s work:
Kimberlin does, in a way, accept responsibility for McCain’s flight, but he says Robert Stacy McCain is blogging from an “undisclosed location” not because he fears for his family’s safety, but because he was living on a compound owned by his church, which was alarmed to learn of his extremist beliefs and writings. Here’s the story from the site “Breitbart Unmasked,” which is written by an unknown blogger, but which essentially supports Kimberlin’s version of events:
According to my sources the church leaders claimed to Mr. Kimberlin after reading several Google entries about McCain’s racism and hatred, that this is NOT what the church was about in its teachings.
It goes on, but you get the idea. By the way it was written, it appears that Pareene is backing up Kimberlin’s version of events by citing an anonymously written blogger who cites anonymous sources without any apparent effort to actually verify the claim. Even if you don’t know that there is widespread suspicion that Breitbart Unmasked is Brett Kimberlin, that is such extremely flimsy sourcing that in my opinion it shouldn’t have been aired.
So I called out Pareene a little bit on twitter and then I wrote him a long email criticizing his article and seeking corrections. And we went back and forth and he eventually issued a correction and an update, but only a partial one. And that left me in a conundrum. For instance, publicly he wrote this:
Your tribal political sympathies — or your opinion of the people involved on each side – may determine on which side you fall, though no one involved seems capable of telling the whole truth.
And since I was one of the people “involved,” it was reasonable to surmise that he felt that I was one of the people who was not capable of telling the whole truth.
And yet when I emailed and complained about that, he wrote back to me:
I think you’re an honest person, really.
Well, he should have altered or otherwise fixed what he wrote, right? But he didn’t. And he wrote other things in that email that made it clear that he recognized that much of what he wrote shouldn’t have been written, or should have been corrected... but weren’t.
Now, I admit that the factual errors go so deep into this that nothing less than a complete rewrite would suffice to fix it. And I was made acutely aware just today how painful that can be, to publicly admit to such a serious error. But it has to be done. If Alex Pareene and Salon won’t do it themselves and clear the record, I guess I will have to do it myself. So let’s warm ourselves up for another fisking.
In just one moment I will link to you scribd copies of each of these emails, but rather than just quote from the email exchange, I am going to fisk this post and quote Pareene’s emails to show you just where he himself admitted that what was written gives you a wholly mistaken impression.
And I am going to color code all of this. So you might jot this down as you read this. Red text is from his original article. Green text is from my emails to him. And purple text is his responses to me. That will hopefully make these things easier to follow.
But before I jump in, let me bring out what I think is a larger, philosophical point. I think part of what is happening here is a culture clash between a lawyer like me, and pretty much everyone else. But I think on this particular issue, we lawyers have it right. I would refer you to a book that I have recommended over a dozen times to aspiring lawyers, Henry Weihofen, Legal Writing Style, 2d Ed. (1980). In the chapter on Precision, he makes a simple point that has powerful implications for the legal writer:
The lawyer must be more precise in his writing than almost anyone else. Most writers can expect their work to be read in good faith, that is with an honest desire to understand what was meant. But the lawyer must write in constant fear of what we might call the reader in bad faith, the man looking for loopholes in the contract so as to avoid liability for his failure to perform, the disappointed heir who wants the will read in a way that would defeat the testator’s intention, the criminal defendant who wants the statute interpreted so as not to cover his act, and all the others who will want to twist the meaning of words for their own ends.
(Page 8.) So literally from the beginning lawyers are taught to be super-precise in their meanings so as to avoid intentional attempts to twist what they said. And how far can this go? Well, here’s an example of the kind of weaselly crud you have to watch out for:
In an Arkansas case, a will provided that the remainder of the testator’s property should be “divided equally between all of our nephews and nieces on my wife’s side and my neice.” Did this mean that half of the property was to be divided among the twenty-two nephews and nieces “on my wife side,” and the other half to go to “my neice,” or that each person was to receive a twenty-third interest? The Arkansas Supreme Court held that the testator’s niece was entitled to a full half share, and rested this largely on the fact that the will used the word “between.” Literally, said the court, this word applies only to two objects. If the reference is to more than two, the preposition should be among.
(Page 9) I think most readers, upon reading that, would realize that they are not nearly as precise in their use of the language as lawyers must be.
So lawyers have to learn to step outside of themselves and see their words not as they intended them to be understood but for what they are saying. You have to put on your “bad faith reader” hat and figure out how your own words could be twisted and then figure out how to prevent that.
On the other hand, Pareene not being a lawyer (as far as I know), lacks the ability to step outside himself and see what he is actually implying with his words. He thinks everyone will just get his meaning, and doesn’t understand that people acting in good faith will genuinely misunderstand his intent. That is the overarching problem, in my humble opinion, in this piece
So let’s dive into the fisking. For starters, here’s a part I didn’t address in email:
In prison, [Kimberlin] became a very skilled “jailhouse lawyer,” filing numerous suits for others and on his own behalf, alleging (often correctly) that his case had been badly mishandled by prosecutors and police.
That makes it sound like as if all he did was fight his own case, fight for his freedom, which is not such a bad thing. But for a guy (Pareene), who accused various people of not telling the whole truth, this is a very “pinched” version of that story. For instance, Kimberlin also filed suit alleging that... hey, let’s let the D.C. Circuit explain:
Appellant Kimberlin filed an initial complaint in this action on November 7, 1997. The amended complaint, filed on behalf of both appellants on May 17, 2001, alleged that the BOP [Bureau of Prisons] musical instrument regulations violate the APA and infringe the appellants’ First Amendment rights to express themselves musically (specifically by playing electric guitars) and, insofar as they make an exception for use of electric/electronic musical instruments in conjunction with religious activity, their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection.
That’s right, he believed he had a first amendment right to an electric guitar in prison. Of course, that is not the most risible example of his abuse of the courts. I think on balance, it would have to be something indicated in Kimberlin v. DeWalt, where the decision to revoke his parole was under review. I have touched on this several times, but his parole was revoked because of his willful and dishonest failure to pay the widow DeLong for the loss of her husband (and for her own damages) as required by law. And in the middle of discussing all that he did to cheat this widow of the money the courts held that he owed her, we read this loveliness:
Sandra DeLong attempted to collect on her judgment by obtaining a writ of attachment against petitioner’s prison commissary account after a United States Probation Officer informed her that petitioner regularly transferred money to someone outside the prison. Petitioner promptly sued Mrs. DeLong, her lawyer, the probation officer, and various Bureau of Prisons and Department of Justice officials for money damages. Petitioner’s action was not successful. See Kimberlin v. U.S. Department of Justice, 788 F.2d 434 (7th Cir.1986).
You got that? He sued his victim for having the temerity to try to collect her judgment against him. So Pareene’s picture of Kimberlin as merely using litigation to fight to clear his name is more than a little misleading.
Next we get this part:
Six witnesses for the prosecution, for example, had been hypnotized — by local cops who’d taken a weekend seminar! — prior to their testimony, which was sketchy enough that former Solicitor General Erwin Griswald agreed to carry Kimberlin’s appeal, pro bono, to the Supreme Court. The court declined to hear it.
Of course this point was taken apart ably by Patrick last week:
Pareene mentions Kimberlin’s main defense to the bombings — that some of the witnesses were hypnotized — without mentioning the damning evidence against him, such as his possession of timers and explosive materials consistent with those used in the bombings.
Oh, and that parole revocation? That was mentioned in a way that was the least damning possible. Here’s what Pareene wrote about it:
Released from prison (then jailed again, and released again, after some issue with his parole), Kimberlin[.]
Some issue with his Parole, eh? Here’s what in fact happened, from Kimberlin v. DeWalt, again:
The examiner found that petitioner used “deceitful maneuvers to hide his ability to pay” [the judgment owed to the widow DeLong] and that his “relatives and friends are obviously acting to help him by filing claims and liens to protect his money and property from being available to satisfy the victim’s judgment.” The examiner further found that the “evidence against [petitioner] was provided by the subject himself,” and that at no time did petitioner “indicate any concern or empathy for the victim.” Finally, the examiner found that petitioner’s settlement offers were not undertaken in good faith; concluded that petitioner had resisted parole supervision by Officer Ramsburg “in every way he can,” and recommended revocation of parole with a presumptive parole date of two years.Id., Exhibit W at 11-14 and Exhibit V at 15. Petitioner was taken into custody at the conclusion of the hearing.
So a minimal amount of research—literally a quick search on Google Scholar—would have revealed that it was not just “some issue” with his parole, but in fact another example of his dishonesty.
And this isn’t obviously a matter of fact and given to correction per se, but I think this is wrong:
I suspect, after reading Singer’s account of Kimberlin convincing himself that Quayle recognized him at a book signing, that he believes his own stories, even the outright false ones — he told Singer a story of meeting an ex-girlfriend that she flatly contradicted, to use one minor example — which, in turn, makes others more likely to trust and believe him.
This is what I wrote on that point to Pareene (notice that not all of these quoted passages will be in chonological order of our emailed “conversation”).
And given that he tells lies that he cannot possibly believe is true--like that he didn’t have his parole revoked or he had no idea he was called the Speedway Bomber[—]I think your assessment that he really believes his own bull is dubious (although not unreasonable). In any case whether he lies or just constantly constructs a fantasy world around him is beside the point; he is utterly untrustworthy.
(Links added.) Pareene continues, now getting to the current controversy:
I had never once heard of this Kimberlin guy (this was all a bit before my time) until dozens of right-wing blogs began obsessively writing about him. In their imaginings, he’s an integral part of the progressive movement — he is “Soros-funded”! — though in reality he is a very persistent but essentially peripheral character.
Of course by the way he wrote that he implied that none of this was true—but in fact he was actually funded by Soros’ Tides Foundation. So there is that.
While’s he’s partnered with Brad Friedman, proprietor of the reasonably well-known BradBlog, he tells me he doesn’t ever blog, tweet or comment.
Which is contradicted in his own peace order petition where he stated that “I don’t publish any blogs other than those directly related to my work as the director of a national non-profit organization[,]” which is pretty much indistinguishable from his activism.
And then he offers Kimberlin’s major defense:
Basically you have a large group of people who receive a great deal of joy from pretending to be the victims of unprovoked and terrible persecution, and they are united against an incredibly litigious narcissist — possibly because he is attempting to block them from exposing his past through intimidation, or possibly because they’re attempting to block him from exposing malfeasance by the activist right. Or maybe a little of both.
We’ll address this in more detail as we go forward, but if Pareene is including me on that list of “people who... pretend[] to be the victims of unprovoked and terrible persecution” let me point out a few facts that, unlike Kimberlin, I can document. Kimberlin approached me, not the other way around, in December emails where he said that he wanted to “out” me in order to testify against my then-client Seth Allen. Then when he filed a motion to compel he accused me—without the slightest shred of evidence—of conspiring with Seth Allen to put mean comments about him on the internet. This was, at that point, an attack on Seth Allen’s right to receive counsel as part of a pattern that has persisted throughout my encounters with him: attack his “enemies” and attack anyone seen as helping his enemies.
And more importantly has Kimberlin offered the slightest proof of any of his version of events? No. Indeed, the entirety of the “connection” between myself and Seth Allen is that Seth Allen was being sued and I provided him with legal advice, which shouldn’t surprise you given that he was being sued after all. I suppose if Kimberlin slashed my tires and I went to a mechanic to replace them, he would think I was conspiring with the mechanic.
But, in short: Kimberlin frequently sues or threatens to sue people who write about him, or who “cyberstalk” him.
And he tries to get his opponents killed, fired, disbarred, and imprisoned on false charges... I mean there is that.
He succeeded in getting a judge to prevent one guy from blogging about him, for a while, and this led to everyone deciding to blog about him extra hard. Meanwhile, some prominent bloggers were the victims of terrifying (and potentially dangerous) false 911 calls, which most of the bloggers claim — without a shred of evidence — to be related, somehow, to their brave decisions to blog about Kimberlin.
Okay so the first line is plainly about me, and thus by implication the second line is not about me. Which means that I don’t count as a prominent blogger which is... correct, in my opinion. And I don’t think most people would call Mike Stack a prominent blogger, so... all that is left is Patrick and Erick Erickson.
So here’s what I wrote to him on that point:
Well, actually each of the people who have [been SWATted have] either written critical pieces about Kimberlin, or have been accused of doing so (including Mike Stack). And indeed in my case, the swatting occurred on the same day as when I won a legal victory against Brett Kimberlin. Now I want to say that carefully. First, I do not believe that Kimberlin has personally swatted anyone; I have listened to the prior three voices and they don’t sound like him. I am presently waiting to hear my own swatting call, but frankly when I do, I am likely to be asked not to discuss it. As for the possibility of him having someone else do this, at this point I don’t have a shred of evidence implicating Kimberlin in that manner. But it is plain as day that this is a person who does it motivated by love of Kimberlin or hatred of his enemies. That is the Occam’s razor answer.
So not a “shred of evidence”? Not by a long shot. There isn’t proof, yet, I grant you, but there is definitely evidence.
An Andrew Breitbart blogger reported back in 2010 on a couple of liberal activist groups — one of which had received grants from the Tides Foundation (Soros!!) — run by Kimberlin, then recounted his history as the convicted Speedway Bomber.
Her name is Mandy Nagy, a.k.a. Liberty Chick, and is it so hard to link to that piece?
Right-wing law blogger Patterico followed up. (Kimberlin’s role in exposing election fraud was no secret: Time reported on him — and his “paradoxical lack of credibility in the service of a credible cause” — back in 2007. And many people involved in reporting on and studying electoral irregularities have used material that can be traced back to Kimberlin.) Kimberlin threatened to sue Patterico and “Liberty Chick,” the Breitbart blogger, because he’s been fighting his battles in the courts for almost 30 years.
Well, that is a soft-pedaling way to put it. This is what actually happened. When Kimberlin threatened to sue him, Patrick wrote:
I ask you to specify anything in my post that you claim is false. If I have made any mistakes I am always happy to correct them. But I won’t take down anything that is true.
Rather than actually name any inaccuracies, Kimberlin just wrote that “[m]ost of the information in the post is false” without, you know, specifying any actual inaccuracies, and then darkly warning to him:
I don’t want to get into a pissing match with you. I have filed over a hundred lawsuits and another one will be no sweat for me. On the other hand, it will cost you a lot of time and money[.]
In other words, the threat of a nuisance suit. It kind of paints things in a different light when you include details like that, doesn’t it?
And that is not to say that Pareene has to write a “war and peace” account, all he has to do is summarize that Patrick had not defamed him and Kimberlin threatened to file a nuisance suit as a result.
This Walker guy is a lawyer and minor (formerly pseudonymous) conservative blogger. He helped out a guy Kimberlin was suing — a DailyKos comment troll, as best as I can tell — with some legal advice. Kimberlin then subpoenaed Comcast and Google to get Walker’s real name and tried to compel Walker to testify, in what Walker says was an attempt to get him to stop blogging about Kimberlin and his past.
In fact, that is not true. You can read the entire filing (minus some redactions) here, and you will see that I merely stated that his goal wasn’t to get my identity for the purpose of obtaining my testimony, but in order to begin a harassment campaign against me. This led me to say this to Pareene:
That’s not accurate. His prima facie motivation was dumber and crazier than that. He was trying to get revenge for the very slight legal help I provided to Seth Allen. Prior to his attempt to out me, this is the sum total of what I had written about him in any blog post:
Brynaert is almost certainly referring to this case, involving the alleged defamation of Brett Kimberlin, the convicted terrorist known as the Speedway Bomber. I suppose next he will assert that I have defamed bin Laden. Seriously, defamation is a cause of action for damage to reputation; does Kimberlin even have a public reputation capable of being damaged?
You can read that, here: [link]
He also professes a belief that there is some kind of massive conspiracy against him of which I am a part. Who knows if he really believes that, though, although I guess it is slightly less insane than going after me for briefly representing Seth.
Moving on:
According to Kimberlin, he was merely seeking Walker’s real name because he thought Walker had threatened his life, or had incited others to violence against him.
Which was my first “what the f---?” moment reading his piece. It made me wonder if Kimbelirn was spinning a new fairy tale, or if Pareene merely got confused. That led me to write this:
Did Kimberlin say that to you when you interviewed him? Or did you gleam that from the documents? I have never heard him previously claim that in regards to anything I wrote prior to May, well after those subpoenas were dismissed. The accusation that I had threatened his life or incited others to do so was first voiced by him in connection with the latest peace order, which he filed for on May 19. And I suspect reading later that you didn’t realize there were more than one. I will point that out when it becomes relevant.
And I would appreciate it if you noted that there was absolutely no evidence of threats or incitement. Indeed, the lower court judge only found incitement by accepting Kimberlin’s argument that merely saying someone has engaged in reprehensible conduct is incitement. So by Kimberlin’s theory, if you report accurately on the Enron scandal, you are inciting violence against Jeffery Skilling and Ken Lay. And for that matter, if you are the parents of Trayvon Martin and you protest your belief that George Zimmerman unlawfully murdered your son, then you are also inciting violence. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that this is not the law.
In any case, any claim that he was seeking my information for any proper purpose has to be squared with his testimony to the contrary. In his testimony on May 29 it was all about my “Everyone Draw Mohammed” website:
THE WITNESS [Kimberlin]: He’s a publisher of a blog called, “Everyone Draw Muhammad.” There is—
THE COURT: Everyone Draws Muhammad?
THE WITNESS: There are 800 depictions of the Prophet Muhammad on that blog in very insulting and vile depictions. He’s asking people to defile and defame the Prophet Muhammad. And--
BY MR. WALKER: With what words did I have (unintelligible) to defame him?
A He asked me a question.
THE COURT: Hang on a second.
THE WITNESS: Okay. As part of my work on human rights and supporting Muslim artists and activists overseas, I thought that this was wrong, The State Department has said that it’s wrong for him to do this, The Government of Pakistan has banned his blog, Osama Bin Laden used his blog to recruit suicide bombers to kill Americans, I felt this was wrong, And so I filed a motion in this case, in front of Judge Jordan, on this contempt--
You can read that, here: [link]
Not that I believe that explanation from him, either. But it is plain that he did not have an interest in my testimony, as he claimed in his subpoenas, given the fact that I was there on the day he claimed he needed my testimony and he never called me to testify.
Now later on you will see that Pareene did exactly fail to understand that there were in fact two peace orders filed against me. And this is what he said to this point:
Kimberlin did say, I think (I have to listen to the recording again) something about you threatening him, which I didn’t take very seriously (again I believe it’s apparent in the piece that he was going after you because you blogged about him and helped out the guy he was suing).
What didn’t occur to me as I wrote this was that the situation was even more muddled than this. Let me start with the correction Pareene offered on this point:
Additionally, I think I misunderstood a statement by Kimberlin: The specific supposed threat against his life that he referred to in our conversation didn’t come from Walker, but (again, according to Kimberlin) from Seth Allen, the gentlemen he was suing, for whom Walker offered the legal advice that led to their fight.
At which only a picture can properly express how I feel about this:
I say that because he suggests he doesn’t know if Kimberlin is telling the truth. Well, why don’t you, you know, do some research? And by research I mean actually asking some people, because this is the rare occasion where there is some truth about Kimberlin’s accusation.
This is something I glossed over in my monster post. Yes, that means that it could have been even longer! But one reasonable question that I didn’t answer in it was this: all of this started when Kimberlin learned that I provided Seth Allen a bit of free legal help—but how did he find that out in the first place?
Well, it started with Seth Allen doing something stupid. Indeed much of this story has been driven forward by Allen’s own stupidity, for which he still can’t take responsibility. He lost the case because he let it go into default. And Kimberlin found out that I had helped Allen because Allen talked about murdering Brett Kimberlin. Mind you I did not believe then and I do not believe now he was at all serious—he was just frustrated—but he wrote in an email to me, Mandy Nagy, to the late Andrew Breitbart and to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Patrick Frey the following:
Hi Aaron, thanks for the response. I think the default judgement is just for the preliminary injunction of deleting my blog. I am going to file motions myself. I will try to make it down to the next court session. But this is bogus. I need to know who this sherriff is. The record is in that courthouse, not at the website you mention. Brett Kimberlin is lying. That sounds like perjury and I want his parole officers to find out if he has yet again perjured himself. And all this time Breitbart just stands on the sidelines as if I don’t even exist. I’ll get this done myself if possible. I need to know that sherriff’s name. I’m no lawyer, but you can’t make claims in court that are lies. That means Kimberlin should go back to jail if that’s true. Whatever, maybe I should murder him. Maybe that will finally get me some justice. This life sucks anyway. All anyone cares about is themselves and their own money. Freedom of speech is dead in America. Thanks for nothing Breitbart.
(Emphasis added.) Since then, this has become the legendary “death threat,” in Kimberlin’s retelling and I am supposedly a bad person for not reporting it—which ignores the fact that one of the other recipients, Mandy Nagy, did report it and told me and Patrick that she was going to report it beforehand, and told me after the fact when she did report it. As I wrote several months ago:
It is elementary that whenever a duty to report misconduct arises—and that is assuming one arose in those circumstances—that duty is satisfied when one knows that another person has reported it.
But then let’s plug that real sequence of events back into the original passage:
According to Kimberlin, he was merely seeking Walker’s real name because he thought Walker [failed to report Seth Allen's death "threat"].
But if that is true, then, Kimberlin is lying to Pareene. That “death threat” was not in fact part of the suit at all as Judge Jordan indicated twice in the November 14, 2011 hearing, first in this exchange:
A [Kimberlin] I mean, as far as, emotional, you know, I mean, this, this guy threatened to murder me. And he, I don’t know if he’s going to come to my house with a gun or not. I’ve had to post his picture for my mother, and my wife, and my kids, to see what he looks like. You know, I’ve had to deal with the FBI --
Q [Judge Jordan] Was that the murder threat from two months ago?
A Yeah. Uh-huh. And --
Q That’s not part of your lawsuit.
And then later the court said “He has, Mr. Kimberline [sic] has already testified, murder threat alleged is not part of this case.”
And indeed the explanation didn’t hold water in other ways. As I wrote closer to the time, (referring to myself in the third person under my pseudonym, “Worthing”):
As noted previously the Plaintiff has made absolutely no attempt to communicate with Mr. Worthing personally until December 15, 2011. This was the case even though Mr. Worthing placed his email address on almost every single post at Patterico’s Pontifications for over a year, and his twitter address was added to each post several months before this date. Instead, the Plaintiff obtained a Peace Order on October 13, 2011, apparently based on Mr. Allen’s email to Mr. Worthing and others, without contacting Mr. Worthing and seeking his testimony. He obtained a judgment and the current injunction on November 14, 2011, all without contacting Mr. Worthing. But now over month later, he suddenly, desperately, needs Mr. Worthing’s testimony? It raises the question of what has changed.
And more fundamentally, the hearing on January 9, where Kimberlin supposedly so desperately needed my testimony, was for contempt of a permanent injunction entered into the court in November, 2011. The alleged death threat occurred in August of the same year. It is impossible as a matter of law for any action to constitute contempt of court if it occurs prior to the order being entered.
Or it might be the case that Pareene is still misunderstanding Kimberlin. So let me make a humble suggestion to him. Upload all the recordings to YouTube and let us hear for ourselves. Let’s crowdsource these claims.
And notice something else. He airs Kimberlin’s lies without any effort to back them up, but on the other hand scolds certain conservatives for allegedly asserting without evidence that the SWATtings were related to blogging about Kimberlin. At one point Pareene states to me that “I think you don’t give me or the reader enough credit” but if you excoriate people on one side for offering accusations without evidence, but are silent when the other side does the same, reasonable people think you are taking their side. Whether it was Pareene’s intention or not, that is what comes across.
Moving on we finally get to the infamous iPad incident:
So, after the hearing, Walker and Kimberlin had a confrontation outside the court. They argued, and, according to Walker (his account is in the massive post linked above), Kimberlin raised his iPad and Walker snatched it away from him. Then he gave it to a deputy. Kimberlin soon filed criminal charges against Walker, alleging assault, claiming to have been rather badly beaten up. “He took my iPad away from me, hit me in the eye, sent me to the emergency room,” Kimberlin told me. Criminal charges were filed, then dropped by the state. Walker claims Kimberlin forged or falsified his hospital records.
Some unsatisfactory video evidence — which, to my eyes, supports Walker’s version of events, or at least I see no evidence that Kimberlin was struck in the eye — was released to both parties.
So let’s notice a few things here. First Pareene acts like as if all Kimberlin ever said was that I hit him in the eye and took his iPad. And while it is appreciated that he said he didn’t believe I even struck him, this really minimizes the level of dishonesty here. Here’s what I wrote on this point:
This is something you gloss over in your post. Kimberlin today merely claims I struck him once at the moment I took the iPad, but that was not the story he told for months before the video surveillance surfaced. Before then, he claimed—under oath—that I had “decked” him, that I struck him repeatedly, that I wrestled with him, that I had to be separated from him by courthouse security, that I kept coming at him over and over again. The video doesn’t absolutely prove I never struck him at all—I recognize its limitations—but it does absolutely prove that almost everything he said about that incident is a fairy tale.
Ah, hell, you’ve seen the video, right?
And indeed, why didn’t Pareene just embed that thing? Is he allergic to spicing up his presentation with video?
And then this is where things just got wrong:
But a “peace order” still forbade Walker from threatening, harassing or personally contacting Kimberlin, and a confused old judge who didn’t understand the Internet found that Walker’s blog posts about Kimberlin constituted a violation of that order.
As I wrote to him:
This is where it became really obvious that you missed that Kimberlin has filed two peace orders.
The first peace order he filed against me was on January 9, the same day as the infamous iPad incident. It was based on his false allegation of assault and the claim that I was harassing him by writing about him. When I had a chance to challenge it in court, the court found no assault occurred but amazingly writing about him to others constituted harassment. Then we appealed it to the Circuit Court, and the court dismissed it.
Then after I filed my massive post on his attempt to frame me, two days later he filed for a new peace order. Then the “confused old judge” comes in and all of that. He found that writing it constituted harassment on the theory I just discussed, that somehow saying that a person has engaged in reprehensible conduct is harassment. And this is just my subjective opinion, but I don’t think the judge had a relevant misunderstanding of the internet. I think he understood well enough to apply the law correctly, if he only followed the law. Instead he refused to follow binding Supreme Court precedent, by name.
He goes on:
Walker was briefly arrested for the violation; he was quickly released, but barred from blogging further about Kimberlin.
I didn’t have a major, thunderous objection to that, but I did write this in response and it shows my care and attention to getting it right:
This is a little un-nuanced. I was arrested for violating the temporary peace order (like a temporary restraining order), but the primary claim is that not that writing about Kimberlin to a general audience violated it. Instead Kimberlin falsely accused me of making threats against him, which if true would be a serious violation of the peace order. But in fact I didn’t threaten him and when his claim was tested in court, he unsurprisingly had no evidence that I threatened him.
Next we get to a part that I said was “unintentionally misleading;” of course the other possibility is that Pareene was being intentionally misled by Kimberlin:
Kimberlin claims that Walker has now filed a suit against him in Virginia seeking a permanent injunction against Kimberlin that would bar him from ever mentioning Walker’s name, which would be a neat bit of irony.
Well, that is simply inaccurate. Here’s what I wrote to Pareene about it:
Actually it was filed in late January, and it merely asked to enjoin him from outing me, as I was not yet outted [sic]. Needless to say that part of it has been mooted by subsequent events. I will be happy to share a copy of the complaint if you would like, but I suspect you have had your fill of legal filings in this case.
Now notice I offer to let him look at a copy of this—as indeed I have done for several reporters. But does he bother to do that? No. So then it is completely unnecessary that he couches his correction in uncertain terms:
Walker says the “permanent injunction” he sought was filed in late January and was done merely to prevent Kimberlin from outing him.
(Emphasis added.) If you don’t believe me, why not actually, you know, verify it? Do journalism!
(And as an aside, I will release my Virginia complaint very soon, and only haven’t done so because of the necessary redactions being a little more extensive than other cases.)
Moving on:
In other words, it’s an extensive legal fight between two self-important people I can almost guarantee you’ve never heard of, except that it’s also the single most important First Amendment cause ever for a bunch of bloggers who will not be silenced by this Kimberlin guy!
On this point, I wrote the following:
Finally, contrary to what you seem to think, I don’t think I am the most important person ever. But I do think he was trying to set a dangerous precedent. If merely reporting on reprehensible conduct is incitement that can justify a prior restraint on speech, then that is the end of journalism.
This part of his response seemed to be aimed at that:
You don’t need to convince me that his legal actions against you were stupid and without merit.
Well, then perhaps the mockery was misplaced?
The “other side” of all of this is that it’s a proxy battle between the left-wing electoral fraud movement, represented by Kimberlin’s “Velvet Revolution,” and the right-wing voter fraud movement, represented by James O’Keefe’s “Project Veritas.”
As it will be clear in a moment, he is merely presenting Kimberlin’s point-of-view—although it should’ve been presented clearly enough that we would know already. But notice that he again lets Kimberlin air accusation after accusation without any evidentiary support.
And I don’t believe James O’Keefe would appreciate this characterization of his work as part of a “voter fraud movement.” This appears to be his weak attempt at spin. What O’Keefe’s work is designed to do is to show how easy it is to commit voter fraud, in order to encourage tighter regulations to prevent voter fraud. So the simplest and most descriptive term is “anti-voter fraud movement.” But Pareene doesn’t want to use that term, because then that might imply that opponents of those efforts are pro-fraud. So we get this ridiculous term: voter fraud movement.
Anyway as for this silly claim by Kimberlin, this is what I wrote:
Well, except for the fact that I have absolutely no connection to O’Keefe, beyond the fact that I wrote a few pieces, for free, for Breitbart’s website and O’Keefe broke some of his famous stories there as well. I have literally never even communicated with him, or see[n] him in real life. Zero contact. I included him in some tweets but he never replied.
He goes on:
The impetus, in this telling, for the original Breitbart post was some explosive material Kimberlin’s group had wrangled, via subpoena, from James O’Keefe’s group.
This was my response:
Did he offer any evidence to prove this? I mean Mandy wrote that original post in October, 2010 so… where is it?
Indeed, what exact subpoenaed evidence are we talking about? The email evidence Kimberlin recently subpoenaed? Because that was long after Mandy’s post.
But more fundamentally, the idea that Kimberlin would have explosive material against the supposed Breitbart conspiracy and he would keep it to himself nearly two years after the fact is just... silly.
And then finally we get to the part that I started off the piece with—where Pareene seems to bolster’s Kimberlin’s side of the story by citing an anonymous blogger (who might be Kimberlin), who in turn cites anonymous sources as follows:
Kimberlin does, in a way, accept responsibility for McCain’s flight, but he says Robert Stacy McCain is blogging from an “undisclosed location” not because he fears for his family’s safety, but because he was living on a compound owned by his church, which was alarmed to learn of his extremist beliefs and writings. Here’s the story from the site “Breitbart Unmasked,” which is written by an unknown blogger, but which essentially supports Kimberlin’s version of events:
According to my sources the church leaders claimed to Mr. Kimberlin after reading several Google entries about McCain’s racism and hatred, that this is NOT what the church was about in its teachings.
That was my second “whiskey tango foxtrot” moment reading that, because the sourcing was so flimsy. Indeed as you will see, this is the first really clear example of Pareene just failing to understand how others see his writing. He knows what he is trying to convey, but if you believe this email exchange, he did a very poor job of communicating to someone else. Here’s first what I wrote:
Breitbart [U]nmasked is either Brett Kimberlin or a close confederate of his. Ask David Hogberg—its author knows facts that are only possessed by Kimberlin himself. McCain himself can verify the same thing. But in any case it is strange for you to support the word of a serial liar, by citing an anonymous blog which claims anonymous sources. Even when I stopped being anonymous, I recognized that I needed to back up what I claimed in original reporting with documentation, because otherwise I am just a guy writing on the internet. As of this day I have offered to work with anyone to obtain copies of every single document I cited and the video evidence I provided. You can check my work, and verify most of my claims; you can’t say the same thing for anything Breitbart Unmasked has said.
But this is how he explains himself in an email to me:
I could’ve been more explicit with the mention of the Breitbart Unmasked blog -- seems clear that he or someone close to him writes it -- but it’s apparent that that’s Kimberlin’s “side of the story,” which again makes its provenance obvious. Our lawyer would’ve made me erase any line explicitly saying he’s the guy writing it but it’s easy to figure out.
(Emphasis added.) Um, no it is not easy to figure out that you are quoting Breitbart Unmasked purely to show that this is a guy in Kimberlin’s corner. The ordinary reader reading this will think that you are quoting that site for support of Kimberlin’s claims.
And then there is a truly unsupported allegation by Kimberlin against me:
Similarly, while Walker says he’s lost his job because of his bosses’ fear of Kimberlin and his criminal past, Kimberlin says Walker lost his job because when his real name was revealed (in court, by Kimberlin), Walker was forced to reveal to his bosses that he was behind a website devoted to cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. “I never contacted his work or anything,” Kimberlin says.
Here’s my response:
First, it was not just me who was fired, but my wife, too. Second, if he has never contacted my work, then how can he pretend to know why I was fired?
To this, Pareene had this response by email:
I suspect he did contact your work, or someone he knows did, and his self-confessed knowledge of the details itself suggests that he did.
Except Kimberlin and whoever Breitbart Unmasked is have never demonstrated knowledge of the details. In fact they have gotten their version of how I have been fired laughably wrong.
But more fundamentally, Pareene airs this false accusation because... he believes his source is lying to him when he says he has no source of information on the subject? By what principle of logic does a person gain credibility when you assume they are lying to you?
And there was even more to my response on this point:
I would also note that you failed to note that he specifically told law enforcement that his conduct endangered my wife and I. I think that is an important fact, so his malicious intent becomes obvious.
And it was not a website devoted to mocking Mohammed. It was a free-speech, anti-terrorist website devoted to protecting the right todepict Mohammed. When Revolution Islam threatened to murder the creators of South Park for depicting—not mocking Mohammed—I and several hundred thousand people decided to commit the same “offense” by depicting Mohammed as well. At my site it was never a requirement that you mock or degrade Mohammed, merely that you depict Mohammed and indeed many submissions were utterly inoffensive, except for the mere fact that they were depicting Mohammed. Not that everyone stuck to that—I ran a pretty free forum—but it was not a site dedicated to mocking Mohammed.
I continued my point in the next part, responding to Kimberlin’s claim that I was fired for my supposedly “extremist beliefs.”
I think this is a victim of Kimberlin’s false claim that the site was dedicated to mocking [M]ohammeed—indeed I am willing to bet that he claimed that it was an anti-[M]uslim hate site. But once you know the truth, it is not extremist at all. Its protecting our God-given right to speak about, and mock, religious figures without fear of vigilante violence. Nothing could be more mainstream.
And by then I was offering more than just factual corrections, but arguing that his attitude about certain points is wrong. For instance, I thought this part was appalling in the way he soft-pedaled what Kimberlin did to me:
To my mind, they’re both victims of their decisions to join a war against a target willing to fight back on slightly unconventional terms.
Unconventional terms? Indeed, slightly unconventional terms?
And indeed the fault is not on Brett Kimberlin for being the kind of person who 1) tries to get people killed, 2) tried to get them fired, 3) files frivolous and unconstitutional legal actions, 4) tries to frame them for a crime, and 5) get them arrested, merely for engaging in protected speech and other constitutionally protected activities (such as providing legal advice). No, it’s our fault for crossing him. We are “victimized” by our “decision” not to give Brett Kimberlin whatever he wants not by Kimberlin’s decision to behave in an immoral and indeed criminal manner.
From my email in response:
My “joining a war” involved a little bit of free legal advice to a man being sued and then resisting as he tried to punish me for that “sin.”
And unconventional is a soft-peddling term. Framing a person for assault is not merely “unconventional”—its criminal. Trying to get a man killed for saying things you don’t like is not just unconventional, but evil.
In his email response, he decided to quibble with me about the meaning of the term “frame.”
I respectfully think your characterization of the assault charges as an attempted “framing” is off-base -- you guys did have a confrontation that got (lightly) physical and while Kimberlin is mostly likely telling a completely fantastical version of the extent of the confrontation, I don’t think it qualifies as a frame job. People accuse other people of assault based on self-serving exaggerated versions of minor confrontations with some regularity, I think, and while it’s lamentable I think “framing” constitutes a much more deliberate and premeditated attempt to falsely accuse someone of a serious crime. (For all I know Kimberlin legitimately believes all that shit about your beating the crap out of him! I really think this guy believes everything he says very strongly. And I wrote that, too, explicitly.)
Shorter Pareene: “Hey, people lie under oath in an effort to take away your freedom all the time—what are you so upset about, Aaron?” To be clear, I am accusing him of the sin of shallowness and lack of empathy.
From my response:
As for your critique of my term “frame” let me add some facts you might not have recalled. And I don’t say that you don’t recall this to be nasty. There is a lot to keep track of, and the “monster post” is more like a small book than a large article. And then when you combine it with subsequent posting, it becomes more like a regular sized book. So details will be missed. That’s just human and almost everyone I have talked to have missed a few details, though I generally work with them to get everything right.
You indicated that you don’t think this was premeditated. Well, about a week before I even met him he was talking about filing criminal charges and peace orders against me. So I consider that evidence that he was planning on manufacturing a criminal case against me.
Further, if you believe as you have stated that I never struck him, that all I did was take the iPad from him and keep it from him, then you have to believe he was not injured by my conduct. If you believe he was not injured, then you must believe that the medical records and photographs he produced allegedly documenting these injuries were faked in some way. Given that he is a convicted document forger, Occam’s Razor suggests that he forged them somehow. And forging documents? That sounds much more like “framing.”
But whether to apply that term “framing” is a matter of opinion and you are entitled to yours. I don’t believe he planned or hoped I would take the iPad from him. His grip was so light I think I genuinely took him by surprise when I did. So it was an opportunistic attempted framing, in my opinion, but it was an attempted framing nonetheless.
So even if you don’t think the right word is “framing” that’s okay. But whatever you call it, it is criminal, and evil, and it is not something that happens all the time.
Sheesh.
I introduced this next passage by writing “this passage here has an implication that is wrong:”
The SWAT-ing accusations seem particularly irresponsible, as their connection to Kimberlin is incredibly flimsy.
I go on writing:
That suggests that I or Patrick have accused Kimberlin of being involved in the swatting. Neither of us have.
Alas, he goes on:
Patterico accused two Kimberlin “associates” of being responsible, though he doesn’t even have evidence that they’re “associates.”
Here’s what I wrote in response:
First, Patrick didn’t accuse anyone, although it is reasonable to say he heavily implied that Ron Brynaert is the swatter (speaking of the first 3 swattings).
Second, as for the association… on April 11, 2012, in court testimony, Kimberlin described Rauhauser as his associate. As for Brynaert, I have posted the evidence of their association on my website.
Here’s his email reply on that point:
I completely, completely disagree that Patterico and others haven’t accused Kimberlin of knowledge of or participation in the SWAT-ings -- that implication is all over almost everything that’s been written about the entire story. Also that post “heavily implying” that Bryneart is responsible is basically an straight-up accusation, again with incredibly flimsy evidence. (I have no love for this Bryneart guy, who seems incredibly unstable and paranoid and weird -- I just don’t see any evidence at all that he’s responsible for what he’s being pretty openly blamed for.)
Well, that first part is simply wrong. We haven’t implied Kimberlin is involved because we don’t know that he was. I’ll leave you to speculate as to what my unverified gut feeling is on the subject, but the only thing I am reasonably sure of is that this is motivated by either support for Kimberlin or hatred of his enemies. Which is not the same as saying he is responsible, not by a long shot.
As for Brynaert here’s what I wrote on that point in response:
As for Patrick’s implication v. accusation thing, I am sorry to harp on that. This might be a bit of a cultural difference between lawyers and pretty much everyone else. We are taught in law school the best way to make your case isn’t to tell people as a rule, but to showthem. So in the most technical sense Patrick has not accused Brynaert. But you are absolutely correct to say it is his intent to show evidence so damning to Brynaert that you conclude he was the SWATter and I have no doubt he believes he is the SWATter and the difference between an accusation and a very heavy implication is quite nominal in those circumstances (although it is very important for legal purposes).
[omitted]
So I believe I have been very clear. I had no evidence of [Kimberlin's] involvement at all. I know the previous 3 SWATtings were not performed by him personally, and I would be very surprised if my SWATter sounds like him. I believe based on the evidence I have heard that Ron Brynaert did it. And I have stated that I have no evidence that Kimberln ordered, desired, or even knew about the SWATtings ahead of time. But I am allowed to point out the obvious, that this is being done to his “enemies” suggesting that the person who did to this at least admired Kimberlin, with the real possibility that this is a freelance “enforcer” who is acting without Kimberlin’s knowledge or consent.
Again, notice he doesn’t even want people to mistakenly jump to the conclusion Kimberlin was behind the SWATtings, but on the other hand, when he airs Breitbart Unmasked’s unsupported allegations against Stacy McCain, we should give Pareene and his audience enough credit to figure out that Kimberlin might be the author because... why exactly? I accept that people might have different journalistic standards than I do, but I would appreciate them applying a single standard.
And finally we arrive at the last, offensive line:
Your tribal political sympathies — or your opinion of the people involved on each side – may determine on which side you fall, though no one involved seems capable of telling the whole truth.
So basically everyone “involved” is being less than fully honest. Bear in mind, he only attempted to email McCain once, and he has only been contradicted on any point by a pathological liar telling a self-serving story (you know, when pathological liars can be most trusted), and by an anonymous writer relying on an anonymous writer when Pareene himself admits that it is very possible that Kimberlin himself is that writer. And in the case of the contradictions between my claims and Kimberlin’s, consider what I wrote here:
But start with what we know. You know I didn’t strike him even once. So you also know he committed multiple counts of perjury against me. And when he produced those medical records and photographs...? Well, we might speculate that this convicted document forger forged some new documents, but all we can say for sure is that one way or the other they are not what they purport to be—evidence that Aaron Walker struck Brett Kimberlin. You know necessarily that he tried to frame me for a crime I didn’t commit. So then you know who is getting it right: my side.
Of course I am biased when I say that, but judge for yourself—is my logic sound?
This was his emailed response on that point:
I think you’re an honest person, really. My last line was directed primarily at Kimberlin and the big-name bloggers hyping the story, and insofar as it applies to you, it just means that, like every other human being on the planet, you tend to tell a self-serving version of the truth.
No sir, there is such a thing as the truth. Like did I “deck” Brett Kimberlin? There is not more than one “version of the truth.” It’s a binary answer. Yes or no. Did law enforcement have to separate us? Did they...
Ah hell, just watch the video again:
No, there isn’t two versions of the truth. There is simply the truth... and what Kimberlin said about it. Or more precisely there is the truth and 1) what Kimberlin said on January 9 when filing charges, 2) what Kimberlin said when filing his petition for a peace order, 3) what he said in an email to my lawyer that night, 4) what he said in court on April 11, and 5) what he has said since the video came to light.
I said at the beginning of this piece I would link to scribd copies of the emails. Well, here’s my first email to him, then his email back, my email back to him and his email back to me. We exchanged a few more emails about when his updated post was coming up, but they said nothing of importance.
Let me close with this. I said a while back that being a journalist is not a matter of some degree you obtained or what job you have, but what you do. Alex Pareene used to be a comedy writer making racially questionable jokes and is now seeking to be a journalist. It is time for him to do what journalists do, write a fair, balanced and truthful account of this controversy and retract what he wrote last week.
And yes, like with me earlier today, it means he will have to rewrite the whole thing. It’s always a little humiliating, but as Woody Harrelson would tell you:
It’s time to nut up or shut up.
And I for one prefer to nut up.
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My wife and I have lost our jobs due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten years. I know that claim sound fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these claims using documentary and video evidence. If you would like to donate and help my wife and I in this time of need, please go to this donation page. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing, mostly for snark and site updates. And you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent History here. And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
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Disclaimer:
I have accused some people, particularly Brett Kimberlin, of reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed communication. I say this in part because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on his property. Don’t sneak around and try to photograph him. Frankly try not to even be within his field of vision. Your behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might report. And even then if he tells you to stop contacting him, obey that request. As you will see by the time I am done telling my story that this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
And let me say something else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you haven’t don’t start.
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